


Exist Only in Reflection

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M, Telepathic Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-10
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:06:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik thinks that Charles should be training too - he proposes a test of Charles's abilities. But he can't quite keep his own mind off what he knows will have to happen soon. [Projection!sex; set during the movie.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exist Only in Reflection

“Could you do that?” Erik asks. “What Shaw’s telepath did.” He’s not sure what makes him speak - they have been lying here in silence for almost an hour. Charles was reading, lying on top of the covers, and Erik has been staring at the ceiling, letting his thoughts drift where they pleased. If Charles had noticed that, he hadn’t said anything.

Charles leans back on the bed, turning to look at him. “Which do you mean? If it’s the turning to diamond part, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed, my friend.” He shows his hand to Erik. “Weak flesh is all you get.”

Erik takes the hand and examines the back of it. “I think I can cope with that. I rather like your weak flesh. And no, I meant the projections.”

Charles’s hand pulls back, just a little. “You want me to create you a woman?”

“No.” Erik stares at Charles. “I just wouldn’t mind having two of _you_ , for a little while.”

Charles flushes red, every part of him that Erik can see. And Erik remembers Raven’s teasing about her brother the flirt, remembers the way that Charles smiles easily at Moira and makes her smile back. And he wonders. “I’ve never tried,” Charles admits. Erik wonders if the embarrassment is at his own lack of inquisitiveness or still about the way he is sprawled out on Erik’s bed like he belongs there.

It’s Charles’s bed really. His house, with its God knows how many rooms. But this one room has been given over to Erik and the few possessions he has accumulated. This one, Charles knocks to enter every time, even as he’s opening the door. He assumes the yes, but he does check. Erik appreciates that.

Charles takes his hand back. He touches his fingertips to the side of his head and concentrates. Nothing happens.

Erik smirks. “The point between rage and serenity, Charles, remember?”

Charles lazily flips him off, which Erik takes better than was probably intended. Getting Charles to stop acting like a professor for five minutes is a challenge worth pursuing.

“Stay still,” Charles says.

“What?”

“Stay- I can’t concentrate if you won’t stay…”

Erik has witnessed Charles do far more complicated things than this – Charles made the guard’s eyes pass over them in the truck, he has stepped into people’s minds and made their decisions for them. Erik doesn’t know what it is about this that is proving so difficult. Charles's free hand clenches in the sheets and the focus of his eyes drifts. He goes into himself to use his powers; he’s nothing like Erik, trying to pull across the expanse of fields to turn the satellite - like everything else - towards Charles's light. “Try and relax,” Erik says. “It doesn’t matter, Charles. We can just…” He reaches across the bed and covers Charles's tensed hand. Charles blinks at him, pale blue eyes disappearing and reappearing rapidly.

And then there is two of him.

The first Charles is smiling that wide beautiful _surprised_ smile that makes Erik feel undeserving. The second one is reaching for Erik’s belt.

“Charles, what?”

“I thought this is what you wanted?”

“I didn’t mean for you to...”

Charles says, “It’s actually proving an excellent test of concentration.”

There are two sets of hands on him now. Charles strips off Erik’s shirt and the other, the projection, pushes Erik’s slacks down his legs. Or perhaps Erik does it and doesn’t know. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing.

“This isn’t quite what she did, you know,” Charles says conversationally. “The Russian only saw one of her. Would you like me to…?”

One of them flickers briefly and Erik grabs at him, “No. Stay.” It’s rare enough to have all of Charles’s attention at the best of times - to have twice that is something beyond his fondest imaginings. It’s worth the risk, worth letting Charles slip a little further into him. Charles smiles.

For being a telepath, Charles’s approach to this so far has been rather chaotic. They have been doing this – whatever this is – for a few weeks. Charles’s mind has a habit of running away with itself. Sometimes Erik needs to slow him down (with a hand, or the curve of a metal bedstead). Sometimes something lurks in the back of Charles’s eyes that says perhaps he is less sure than he is pretending. This is new to both of them, if not in the same way.

Not tonight though. Tonight, Charles says, “Close your eyes.” He doesn’t add even a hint of suggestion to it but Erik finds his eyes drifting shut. It doesn’t mean that he trusts Charles completely but he can think of no one else he trusts even this much.

And now there are four hands, two mouths, two chests that rise and fall with gasps and warm breath against him. “Erik,” they say, and he doesn’t know where the voice comes from.

"Charles," he says. "My God, Charles."

"What?" Charles asks, with his mouth at Erik's ear. The other one licks a stripe down Erik's chest and darts around the raised nub of his nipple before tracking lower. "Can you tell the difference?" one whispers.

Erik exhales a low breath. "Of course I can tell," he says. "I would always tell."

"Why's that?" Charles asks, nothing in his voice but intellectual curiosity, damn him.

"Because the real you- fuck. The real you doesn't bite quite so hard."

Which is interesting. The Charles composed entirely in Charles's head is crueller and sharper than the Charles of true flesh. There is a space between thought and action where another Charles lives. Erik opens his eyes to look at both of them.

Gentle fingers brush over a red mark that shouldn't exist, that perhaps only exists in their minds. "Did I hurt you?" Charles asks. Charles could turn him inside out; Charles could tell him to take that coin and fire it through his own skull. But Charles never would. The only thing holding Charles back is his own mind, and Erik doesn’t know if that is a blessing or a curse.

"Did I say 'stop'?" Erik asks.

"Would you?"

Erik shrugs. "If I wanted you to stop, I would have stopped you."

Two pairs of eyes look at him, disbelief writ across them. It's harder to tell the difference now. One of them says, "You never have before." Charles has always asked - that twitch of his hand - before diving into Erik's mind. Every time but once. He reads _something_ , Erik knows, even without trying. No one but Charles knows what he saw there that first time, when Erik was screaming so loudly in his mind that Charles jumped into the ocean to make him stop.

Erik pushes one of them - the true Charles - back onto the bed. "There has never been a need," he points out quietly. The Charles underneath him squirms but the other drags his fingers down Erik's back.

The touch judders briefly and when Erik looks down, Charles is reciting something under his breath.

"Concentration, Charles," Erik reminds him.

This time there is no sharp retort, only Charles's soft voice murmuring, "I know, I know. I'm _trying_."

And he is - Erik can tell. But Erik is not built for reassurance. He presses his one finger in and when Charles gasps and is tight all around him he says, "I know. But if you _lose_ that fabled concentration, I do reserve the right to stop."

Charles's pupils are blown wide. He curses inventively in three languages Erik recognises and one that he doesn’t before dissolving into, "All right, all right. Wait, just... wait."

The other hands come back, but nothing else. Erik raises his eyebrow. "Your best, Charles, or nothing at all." And then he is the one to gasp: the warm heat of another body spread over his back, breathing hot sighs against his neck. Erik slides the next finger in and waits; this time Charles holds the visions together.

Erik moves between the two of them, opening up the Charles shaking underneath him, and letting the other’s hands and mouth roam over his own body. When he pushes in, finally, Charles makes a noise Erik has not heard before, and jerks up harder against Erik, sweat-slick and shaking. The other holds steady, whispering into Erik’s ear through his release, but Charles, as if a mask has been pulled away, twists and pleads until he too is pulled tight and carried through it.

It has never- before it wasn’t like this. Charles is controlled, always, and perhaps more than a little afraid but hiding it well. He’s not used to this but his face, so open with its joy, hides well the other ends of the spectrum. And yet he looks frightened now, a little. Erik reaches up to his own neck to feel out the indents where a Charles that does not exist has left teeth-marks.

“Well,” Erik says, “that was different.”

“If you will insist on fucking telepaths,” Charles drawls, still shaky, “then these things will happen. Why, are you reconsidering?”

“Largely,” Erik says, “I’m wondering what else we could do.”

Charles glares half-heartedly. "You needn't be so pleased with yourself." Erik thinks to berate him for mind reading before Charles touches the crease at the corner of Erik's mouth. Charles doesn't need expression to read anyone but he is smiling to himself anyway, for being the cause of Erik's smile. He's easily pleased. Erik wonders what that would be like: for Charles's smile, and the prospect of more, to be enough to balance out the rest.

He is being unfair to Charles. It is not that simple. Erik does not need to be a telepath to know that even now, part of Charles's mind is on the children, and the blockade and how to stop a war.

A hand touches his cheek. It’s not a hand of flesh but it’s still real, the stroke of created fingertips. “What are you thinking?” Charles asks with a smile. Charles keeps smiling at him while the phantom fingers brush Erik’s face and toy with his hair. No gun calluses on these hands and no steep of blood, and none on their true counterparts either. In another lifetime, another Charles is changing the world in ways Erik would be incapable of imagining. The other Charles, perhaps, could show him how. But for them there is only this world, and these men, and this is not a time for peace.

“It’s not enough, you know.” Erik says.

“I’m sorry?”

“You need to train too.” He softens his tone, or tries to. “We need to be ready.”

“What is it that you want me to do?”

“I can turn around the guns in their hands, Charles. All you need to do is tell them to turn their hands.”

“Erik.”

“And you will. You would. If it came down them or Raven. If it came down to them or-.” He cuts himself off. “We all have our lines. The only difference is where we choose to draw them.”

Charles leans up onto his elbows. “Yes. That’s quite true.”

“That isn’t what I…”

“I know what you meant.”

“Charles.”

“And you’re quite adept at destroying the mood, let me tell you.”

“ _Charles_.”

The image of a second Charles flickers and dies, like a mirage. The true Charles pulls Erik down beside him on the bed. “Stay still,” he says. He drapes his arm over Erik’s chest, sliding into the space at his shoulder. He is a warm weight, just himself now, curved into Erik’s body. “Tomorrow,” Charles says. “I promise we can argue tomorrow.”

Erik is not sure that will do any good. If he had a thousand Charles, and a thousand years to argue with them all, he is still not sure that the two of them would come any closer to agreement on this point. Charles will not be moved and Erik… Erik could give Charles anything but this.

Charles sighs in his almost-sleep and whispers, “Tomorrow. Let it be tomorrow’s problem. Rest.” His fingers slip over Erik’s eyelids and skim his cheeks. “Rest.”

Erik thinks that perhaps Charles knows just as well as he that there will be no solution tomorrow. He pulls Charles more tightly against him and kisses the top of his head. “Dream,” Erik says. There, at least, he can follow Charles across the worlds that they will never know; waking is hours away yet.


End file.
